ng until they fairly met face to face, each with a sack
upon his shoulders.

"Con M'Mahon!" exclaimed the priest, "why, what on earth brought you out
at this hour of the night, and--aisy, what is this you're' carrying?"

"Faix, your reverence," replied the other, "I might as well ask yourself
the same two questions."

"I know you might," said Father Anthony; "but in the manetime you had
better not."

The priest spoke like one whose wind had not been improved by the
burthen he carried; and M'Mahon, anxious if possible to get rid of
him, determined to enter into some conversation that might tire out his
strength. He consequently selected the topic of the day as being best
calculated for that purpose.

"Isn't these blessed times that's coming, plaise your reverence," said
M'Mahon, "when we'll be done wid these tithes, and have the millstone
taken from our necks altogether?"

This was spoken in a most wheedling and insinuating tone replete with
the the confidence of one who knew that the stronger he spoke the more
satisfaction he would give his auditor, and the more readily he would
avert any suspicion as to his object and appearance at such an hour.

"Yes," returned the priest, giving his burthen an uneasy twitch, "we
have had too weighty a load upon our shoulders this many a day, and the
devil's own predicament it is to be overburthened with anything--we all
know that."

"Sorra doubt of it," replied the other, easing himself as well as he
could by a corresponding hitch; "but it's one comfort to myself anyhow,
that I done my duty against the same tithes--an' bad luck to them!"

"If you did your duty, you weren't without a good example, at all
events," replied the priest; "I taught you how to hate the accursed
impost--but at the same time, you know I always told you to make a
distinction between the tithes and the--hem--"

"An' what, your reverence?"

"Hem--why you know, Con, that we're commanded to love our enemies, and
it was upon this ground that I always taught you to make a distinction,
as I say, between the tithes and the parsons themselves. And by the way,
now, I don't know but it would be our duty," he proceeded, "to render
the same parsons, now that they're suffering, as much good for evil as
possible. It would be punishing the thieves by heaping, as the Scripture
says, coals of fire upon their heads."

"And do you think, your reverence," replied the other, who was too quick
of apprehension not to su